Gary Rubinstein writes here about a lawsuit filed by parents of children on Success Academy’s “got to go” list. The celebrated charter chain settled for $1.1 million. The corporate chain fought the lawsuit for 4.5 years, refused to turn over documents but finally settled.
Gary writes:
Success Academy is the largest and most controversial charter chain in New York. By one measure — state test scores — it is the most successful. But over the years they have been embroiled in several significant scandals. The two most prominent was the ‘rip and redo’ incident, where a teacher was caught on tape screaming at and ripping up a paper of a very well behaved young child, and the ‘got to go’ list where a principal created a list of students he planned to either expel or otherwise compel to leave.
But beyond these two high profile scandals, there are thousands of unreported mini-scandals that are just as harmful to the students who suffer them. Over the years hundreds, if not thousands, of families have suffered from the way that Success Academy gets those families to transfer their children out of the school. One trick they use a lot is threatening to leave back — or actually leaving back — students who are passing their classes and the state tests. This was documented nicely in a podcast about them last year. But the most heartless way they get parents to ‘voluntarily’ switch to another school is through coordinated harassment. When Success Academy has students who do not respond to their strict disciplinary code, what they do is start calling the parents day after day and demand that the parents come get their children. Sometimes the phone calls start at 8:00 AM. If the parents are at work and they are not able to come and get the child, Success Academy threatens to call Administration for Child Services (ACS) on them and, in some cases, actually does call ACS or the police or has the child picked up by an ambulance and brought to the emergency room. Even with all this, Success Academy is still the darling of the education reform movement since, I guess, the ends (high state test scores) justify the means (abusing — in my opinion — families and children).
In December 2015, five families of Success Academy students filed a civil suit against them. The five families had similar complaints about how Success Academy created what the lawsuit called a ‘hostile learning environment.’ Many of the children had various disabilities, like ADHD. Some of the court filings that I have read describe how Success Academy did not modify their protocols to address these disabilities. Also in the documents the families filed, we learn that Success Academy was not cooperative during the five year trial.
Gary wonders whether other families treated shabbily by Success Academy be encouraged to sue by this precedent?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Five years is a long time to wait for some penalty, and a small one at that, for practices designed to CHEAT students and their parents.
You know the more I think about this the angrier I get. There really are separate justice systems in this country, one for the rich and powerful and one for poor &/or not powerful.
Eva’s lawyers have the money & clout to drag this lawsuit out for years. I have no proof of this but I would not be surprised if her lawyers & funders had enough connections inside state & federal DoEd to manipulate the regulatory system to their advantage. The “regs” are there to protect kids from the likes of Success Academy and public schools that discriminate against kids with disabilities. Her lawyers would know exactly which gears to break to exploit the system machinery.
Matt Taibbi wrote about the disparity in meting out justice in his 2014 The DIvide. Paltry settlements are the bread & butter of corporate lawyers. The system lets white collar criminal actors off the hook for severe consequences that, if a similar offense is committed by a poor person, they go to jail & sometime lose their rights for a lifetime.
It’s not that cororagte fraud is identical to Eva’s harmful discrimination practices but it shows that her funders know just how much they can push back against families in our so called justice system.
Here is an interview Taibbi did on NPR about this book:
https://www.npr.org/2014/04/06/297857886/in-books-trial-of-u-s-justice-system-wealth-gap-is-exhibit-a
In one sense this settlement shows that charters are acting as private corporations. Public entities cannot legally keep settlement details private. On the other hand, $1.1 million is not all that much money in Eva and Wall St funders world. It’s too bad the parents couldn’t hold out for more.
Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) violations are an area that could either force charters to play by public school rules re: kiddos with IEP or pay for parent’s attorney & court fees when they are caught violating kids rights.
I don’t know if charters are required by law to follow regulations in place under IDEA. If some of those children Eva mistreated have IEP.s and it is found that Success violated their rights & protections, the school system is responsible for the family’s attorney fees. Does anyone out there know where charters fall with regard to violating FAPE?
I could envision a charter that was violating FAPE pushing off the litigation losses on to the public school system.
With JCGRIM above, this is what we get when we change our political foundations from PUBLIC SERVICE to PRIVATE/Corporate/Capitalist-only.
It’s the same with the Post Office. Watch that idiot GOP contributor who leads the USPO in Congressional hearings next week. Their claim is that it’s not making money.
HUH? From a private/corporate/capitalist-only foundation, “It’s in financial crisis.” Whereas, from a foundation of PUBLIC SERVICE, we fund it with public funds regardless–as much as it needs to provide that service well. I wonder if they even know the difference. For a capitalist-only mindset, if it doesn’t make money, it’s not worth keeping.
THIS MOVEMENT IS A BIG DEAL. CBK
For a private capitalist-only school . . . if a certain kind of student doesn’t fit the mold that best makes money for the corporation (or doesn’t fit their racist ideology), get rid of them. Makes perfect sense . . . if your foundation is capitalist-only and public service is not even a speck on your foundational horizon. CBK
When we all think the GOP can’t go any lower, think again. They’ve become a criminal organization- cheat, steal, & DO ANYTHING to win. Republican elected officials across the board have taken the oath of omerta as they watch this administration & it’s bundlers hustle the American people.
https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-doing-the-math-postal-service-hustle-slowdown-elections/
“These assaults hit areas represented by Republicans the hardest, which is why traditionally Republicans would scream the loudest about cutbacks to mail delivery. Because Trump means to steal an election, they have zipped up, while their constituents suffer. It’s probably really bad for their re-elections to have the most consumer-facing manifestation of the government suddenly give bad service. It’s bad for Trump’s too, on the face of it. But when you’re trying to prohibit ballots from reaching people, it’s just collateral damage.”
And here: When can we say the US is no longer a democracy?
Several states are featured but TN is on top of the heap. Bill Lee is one of the worse (if not the worse) governors in the country.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a33596410/tennessee-legislature-protests-sleep-state-property/
JCGRIM: I do believe the democratic spirit lives on in most of us. Whether it has received its proverbial wake-up call is quite another question. ????? CBK
The community hospital in my part of Brooklyn saved my life 20 years ago. It was subsequently taken over by a for-profit corporation. When the hospital didn’t turn a profit, the corporation closed it, selling off its land and buildings.
DIANE Yes . . . different political foundations = different goals, different criteria for what constitutes the good, different outcomes. CBK
DIANE: ADDENDUM to my previous response to your note about that community hospital:
It’s never inappropriate to recall that, unlike other kinds of change, foundational change tends to EEK into our consciousness and becomes pervasively powerful even when we are unaware of it.
Hence, a change of language, for instance, from students to customers SEEMS unremarkable when, in fact, and with other subtle changes, it sets the stage for everyone waking up one day where democracy and public institutions have disappeared.
In that respect, and whether religious AND/OR corporate ideologues, the long-term totalitarian thinkers have the edge over the politically-thoughtless among us. CBK
Imagine the legal fees.. could easily exceed the cost of the settlement
Peter Goodman Score one for them? CBK
Note to plaintiff’s lawyers:
Perhaps another strategy would be to sue the SUNY Charter Institute and the trustees of the SUNY Charter Institute — the group of white lawyers and businessmen whose specific policies and actions incentivize Success Academy to act in this way.
The trustees at SUNY Charter Institute could stop this in one minute flat. They are the only people in the entire country who have any direct oversight of Success Academy. It would take them almost no money to do a deep dive into Success Academy’s real attrition rates, and yet their trustees and generously paid Executive Director Susie Miller Carello, who seems to be paid around $200,000/year!, have ignored a myriad of complaints and rewarded Success Academy with an extraordinary number of new charters and renewals. And that extraordinary number of charters given to Success Academy are all paid for by us, the taxpayers who also pay Susie Miller Carello’s extremely generous SUNY salary.
The trustees and staff at the SUNY Charter Institute do not care about attrition. And that is an extraordinary thing. The trustees at SUNY are getting complaint after complaint about kids being pushed out — what is the first thing any oversight agency would do? Why, they would check to see how many students were leaving and who they are and why! And yet examining longitudinal attrition rates is something that SUNY has avoided doing as if doing so is a bad thing to do! It’s only “bad” if SUNY is trying to cover up the attrition rates.
Can you imagine an oversight agency that is more interested in enabling the very highest attrition rates of any top-performing charter network in NY than in seeing if the many complaints they are getting from parents about their kids being pushed out are true?
There is only one conclusion to be made. That Eva Moskowitz is pushing out children because the SUNY Charter Institute trustees does not want her to stop pushing out children.
If the SUNY Charter Institute wanted her to stop, Moskowitz would have to stop. It is that simple.
That is why the plaintiffs should sue the trustees of the SUNY Charter Institute.
Remember, the SUNY Charter Institute knows for a fact that the Success Academy high school began with 191 ninth graders in the fall of 2016 – all of whom were educated at the Success Academy middle schools that SUNY says were the very best in the state – and yet only 99 of those 9th graders graduated 4 years later.
And SUNY praised and rewarded Success Academy because those 99 students all graduated and are going to college and ignored what happened to almost 100 OTHER students who should have also been graduating.
There is no excuse except corruption that I can see. If the media didn’t accept nonsensical “explanations” like “most of those missing 100 students were just flunked and are still at the school”, a real journalist would ask the obvious follow up question: “but every one of those students came from the the very same Success Academy elementary and middle schools that you at SUNY have said were the best in the state, and now you are saying that nearly half of those students who just spent 9 years being educated by Eva Moskowitz need 5, and maybe 6 or 7 years to finish high school?”
Eva Moskowitz is like Donald Trump. Trump could not do what he does without Mitch McConnell, Brett Kavanaugh, Fox News all enabling him. With real oversight, Trump would just be a racist president with no power instead of a dangerous man who has hurt so many people and bankrupted our country.
And Eva Moskowitz could not do what she does if she wasn’t enabled by the SUNY Charter Institute board, Andrew Cuomo, and the NYT and Chalkbeat education journalists who report on Success Academy the way Fox News reports on Trump. Once in a blue moon there is an article that presents the criticism as a “both sides” argument in which it is only angry union teachers who are the critics and hundreds of thousands of grateful African American parents who insist that Eva Moskowitz must have no oversight because she is perfect!
If the media put pressure on the SUNY Charter Institute to do their oversight job, then the SUNY Charter Institute would be viewed by everyone the way Mitch McConnell is viewed. If you are a racist Trump supporter, you love Mitch because he “protects” the beloved Trump. And if you are a racist charter supporter who is certain that suspending as many as 20% of a kindergarten and first grade class that has virtually no white students is because you believe with all your heart that any kindergarten class with virtually no white students must have a huge number of violent 5 and 6 year olds that you are grateful that Eva Moskowitz is identifying for suspension, then you share the values of the white trustees at the SUNY Charter Institute and adore them for protecting Eva Moskowitz.
Imagine if Trump and his band of right wing billionaires presented a study that hydroxychloroquine cured 99% of the staff and students in charter schools with COVID-19, and when it was pointed out that the study had started with 191 patients with COVID-19 and yet only 99 were left in the study at the end, the SUNY Charter Institute trustees said “but we know the people who left didn’t want to be cured, so it’s a miracle”.
Imagine the NYT and Chalkbeat education journalists reporting on this miracle COVID-19 cure kept interviewing all the happy charter school parents and staff who marvel at how hydroxychloroquine cured them all. Imagine the NYT journalists agreeing with the SUNY Charter Institute that they must ignore the fact that nearly 100 patients disappeared from the charter because the charter says they would have been cured if they had really wanted to be cured, but of course they did not want to, so they left.
I’d love to see the staff and trustees at SUNY have to answer questions under oath about how they dealt with parent complaints about wrongdoing at Success Academy. “We asked Eva Moskowitz, she explained it to us, and our investigation was done!”
Success Academy needs a complicit SUNY Charter Institute and mediocre education journalists who have no understanding of statistics to get away with this.
Someone should interview Pedro Noguera about this. He seemed to be the only person on the SUNY Charter Institute board who wasn’t a white lawyer or businessman, and he stepped down years ago, writing a letter about their failure to do oversight. It seems to be much worse since then. Is Noguera willing to call out the SUNY Charter Institute’s acting as a PR firm for charters instead of an oversight board?
It would be interesting to know if the state legislature and the governor have political influence as to who gets to head up the SUNY Chart Institute. Cultural and political influence are the operative words here, not technical legal power. Or maybe there is both? I will ask my friend, a well known advocate in NYS, and see if she is wiling or able to answer.
Cuomo picks the SUNY board. The SUNY board picks members of SUNY Charters Institute, which authorizes charters but provides no oversight for the charters it authorizes. All roads lead back to Cuomo and his Wall Street funders.
Robert,
This, according to their website, are the SUNY trustees who serve on the subcommittee that does the only oversight of the charters authorized by the SUNY Charter Institute:
white man Joseph Belluck, a trial lawyer (he is the chair!)
white man Eric Corngold, a lawyer!
white man Robert Duffy, who spent 30 years as a Rochester policeman, including 7 years as Rochester Police Chief — he was then the Mayor of Rochester for 5 years.
white man Edward Spiro, a lawyer!
And finally, Member (ex officio): white woman Dr. Merryl H. Tisch
Anyone surprised that these 5 white people always believe the white charter CEO who strongly endorsed Betsy DeVos, and dismiss anything said by the (non-white) parents who simply ask for their children to be treated as they legally should be treated.
Do you think the white former police chief nods knowingly when Eva Moskowitz explains how she is just appalled at how violently so many of the kindergarten children who win her lotteries act out in their charters and how she just has no choice but to give them the very harshest punishment and suspend them? I’m sure that he’d be nodding knowingly if Eva Moskowitz was suspending extraordinarily high numbers of affluent white children in kindergarten and telling the white police chief how terribly violent so many of those affluent white 5 year olds were. Or maybe not.
And of course, white woman Susie Miller Carello is the Executive Director of the SUNY Charter Institute who knows that real oversight of the charters that white billionaires adore means that whatever that white charter CEO says to justify her actions should be considered the gospel truth, no investigation needed, but giving her lots more charters is absolutely necessary.
And remember, not a single one of these white people who oversee Success Academy thought it was at all odd that huge numbers of African American and Latinx students disappear from “the top performing charter school in all of NY State”. If huge numbers of affluent white students were disappearing from “the highest performing charter in the state” and their white parents were filing complaints about how their kids were pushed out, would those white trustees presume all those white parents were liars with violent and nasty children because those white trustees say that as long as half the white parents are happy, then that means that the other white parents are all liars with nasty and violent kids?
I doubt it. I doubt the SUNY Charter Institute would have accepted without question the word of the charter CEO who endorsed Betsy DeVos over the word of numerous white parents who complained about how their child was treated.
The settlement should have been $1.1 Billion with EM being convicted of child abuse and spending time in prison.
“Success Academy ‘Got to Go’ List”
The author of the “got to go”
Has simply got to go
It’s not that we don’t like him, though
But that the public know
The 4th episode of the podcast ‘Nice White Parents’, which came out a few days ago, featured a look at the Success Academy.